The best Apple Watch apps: 42 essential apps and games

One of the most impressive things about the Apple Watch is the selection of apps compared to rival platforms. With more than 10,000 available to download, the App Store has the potential to be the best in the business.

So which should you download first? We reckon these would be a good place to start…

Everyday essentials

Cheatsheet

If you’re the kind of person forever forgetting important details — the office Wi-Fi password, a new phone number, your own name — Cheatsheet lets you make a tiny list of quick notes and shove them on your Apple Watch. Each item can have its own icon, making it easier to spot, and you can even set the first item to appear on your watch face as a Complication. Just don’t make it your credit card PIN.

Reminders Nano

For reasons best known to Apple’s developers, Reminders didn’t make it to Apple Watch. (Perhaps they forgot to set a reminder to make the app.) Reminders Nano picks up the slack, enabling you to browse your existing reminders, mark items as done, add new things to a list, and view what’s already been completed. As an added bonus, the iPhone app’s a lot nicer to use than Apple’s Reminders.

Not being able to watch feature films and telly on your wrist isn’t a disappointment. But tiny seconds-long snatches of video seem well-suited to wrist-based viewing. Vine enables you to take in featured and favourite Vines, so you can stare at cats doing amusing things while waiting in a supermarket queue, audio blaring from your Apple Watch in a manner that totally won’t annoy everyone around.Free, iTunes

Fantastical 2

Apple’s Calendar app is fine for reading appointments, but Fantastical 2 saves you fishing out your iPhone to add events. Force Touch to access the relevant command, and then dictate. The app’s natural-language input means it usually successfully interprets the likes of “lunch on Friday at 2pm for an hour”, making you feel like you’re living in the future. A bit.

CARROT Weather

On the iPhone, CARROT Weather is an amusing oddball, marrying the forecasting smarts of Dark Sky with the snark and hostility of a malevolent AI out to destroy humanity. On Apple Watch, there’s less room for snark, although some is still delivered with aplomb; fortunately, this comes alongside precise forecasts, rainfall predictions, and complications that put weather updates on your watch face.

Streaks

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This clean and simple habit-builder has come in for some criticism due to its limitations: you only get to define six habits, and must set them to happen on specific days of the week. But it’s effective to focus on a smaller number of tasks, and the Apple Watch app is great for marking them as done, and for keeping track via the app’s complication.

BBC News

There are quite a few news apps for Apple Watch, but the BBC News app is our favourite. You get notifications about plus access to headlines grouped into ‘top stories’, ‘my news’ (based on favourite categories defined in the iPhone app) and ‘most read’. For each article, you get a brief synopsis and picture, and Handoff can load the full story on your iPhone.

ProCamera

If you’re already a user of ProCamera, this Apple Watch app gives you a bit more control than Apple’s own camera remote. Along with a remote trigger, external viewfinder preview, photo preview and timer, you can also use it to configure the length of the timer delay and how many photos will be shot.

Deliveries

Deliveries is pretty great on every platform, tracking goodies that are winging their way to you, and ensuring you’re not out when a courier is about to hurl that new laptop over your fence. On Apple Watch, you get the same list, location maps of where your things currently are, and handy notifications when a delivery is imminent.

Slack

Slack’s popularity as a team communications tool is undeniable, but you wouldn’t want to scroll through the entire feed on your wrist. The app therefore wisely limits itself to direct messages and mentions, which you can reply to using succinct pre-defined answers, Emoji, or voice input by way of Siri.

Find Near Me

This app is great for quickly finding nearby businesses by category, all by tapping a button: ATM; bank; bar; spa; zoo… As you can see, the odd option is a bit unusual, but the app’s fast and even enables you to use your own search terms via Siri (currently a rare thing on Apple Watch). Individual items when selected usually provide additional details (addresses; maps) and reviews.

Viki

The idea of Wikipedia on your wrist is probably a bit weird, but we like Viki a lot. The interface is smart and to the point, letting you search all of Wikipedia or just find things that are nearby. The cut-down articles it presents are short enough not to make your eyes glaze over, but give you enough detail to make them worth loading. And the app happily works without your iPhone being on, yet enables you to bookmark whatever you’d like to later read on a bigger screen.$2.99, iTunes

eBay

The world’s biggest car-boot sale comes to your wrist with eBay, which lets you check out your notifications, watch list, and what you’re buying and selling. Items can be viewed, and you can bid on standard auctions. (Oddly, you can’t actually ‘buy it now’ from your Apple Watch.) The app won’t load new data if your iPhone’s off but it’ll at least let you look through what was there when the app was last opened.

Travel

Citymapper

If you’re in one of the supported cities (which include Paris, New York and London), Citymapper is a must. It zeroes in on public transport, and provides precise, clear instructions on getting from place to place. You’re informed about times for upcoming busses, trains or trams, and can access an outline of the stops to expect on your journey. And with watchOS 2, Citymapper’s complications can put your ETA and directions right on your watch face.

App in the Air

Self-described ‘personal flying assistant’ App in the Air now does an awful lot on your wrist. The Apple Watch app tracks your flight, gives you in-flight ‘courses’ to stop your neck seizing up, and provides gate and security wait times. Complications and Time Travel support, respectively, give you relevant and timely information on your watch face, and enable you to zip through your journey virtually by way of the Digital Crown.

Google Maps

Google offers some tentative first steps with its Apple Watch app, which isn’t nearly as impressive as Citymapper’s, but warrants inclusion because, well, it’s Google Maps. There are buttons for getting quick directions to your home and work, along with links to recent routes used in the iPhone app. Text-based journey directions can be browsed (although there are no maps – yet), and Force Touch gives you buttons for switching transport type.

Currency

There are plenty of currency conversion apps for Apple Watch, but Currency gets the nod because it’s fast, elegant and responsive. On your iPhone, you define currencies to track and the order in which they should appear. Changes are reflected almost immediately on your Apple Watch. You then tap a currency and type in an amount to convert, and the rates quickly update. The glance view speeds things up further, displaying your main currency and the next three in your list.

TripAdvisor

Designed to inform you about nearby places to “eat, play and stay”, TripAdvisor is a useful app to have on your wrist when out and about. Pages for selected places boast imagery, maps, addresses and reviews, and can be saved for later perusal on any of your devices.

Health, fitness and sport

Runtastic

With watchOS 2, Runtastic can finally access your heart rate data along with displaying details of your run on the wrist. Of course, if you want GPS tracking you still need to take a phone along, but you’ll return with richer data than any other Apple Watch fitness app.

7 Minute Workout “Seven”

We’ve lost count of how many seven-minute workout apps there are for Apple Watch (way more than seven), but this clumsily named one makes our list through taking full advantage of watchOS 2. You get all the usual routines and diagrams, but also pulse recording and a complication for a ‘7 Month Challenge’ (to do the workout across that period); additionally, your workout helps to fill your Apple Watch’s exercise rings.

Sleep++

This app utilises the motion-tracking capabilities of your Apple Watch, opened up to devs in watchOS 2. The idea is to monitor the duration and quality of your sleep, potentially helping you make changes if you’re restless (or, say, mucking about on Facebook until 2am every night and wondering why you’re always so tired the next day). There’s a complication and optional integration with HealthKit, and the developer has blogged about tips for keeping your Watch charged if you’re wearing it all night.

Hole19

A comprehensive tool for golfers, Hole19 provides you with hole routing, course stats, and a simple interface for logging your score. Once you’ve started a round on your iPhone, your Apple Watch hones the data down to what you need at any given moment: key distances; score input; and putt tracking.

CARROT Fit

The CARROT series puts a new spin on tired app categories, and this one’s all about the 7-minute workout. The malevolent CARROT AI puts you through your paces, doing ‘Celebrity Face Punches’ and ‘Dragon Mating Dances’. Start your workout and your Apple Watch can become a heads-up display, so you know what exercise you should be doing – or to pause things for a bit if your body’s about to break.

Slopes

Having detailed speed, altitude and distance stats to hand when careening down a mountain on skis or a snowboard is all very well, but an iPhone’s not the best of devices to access during such occasions. Slopes therefore enables you to start recording data right from your Apple Watch, gives you important stats on your wrist, and has a Glance view for figuring out how much time you’ve spent zooming along on snow compared to riding boring lifts.

Productivity

PCalc

It’s astonishing Apple omitted a calculator from Apple Watch (maybe Tim Cook hates Casio), but we’re dead chuffed PCalc exists to heroically come to our rescue. It has a smart interface, with operators and tip calculation just a button tap away (rather than placing these things behind a Force Touch wall). On watchOS 2, everything’s super-responsive, and you can use the Digital Crown to adjust tip amounts. (Generously, the also includes the Apple Watch app.)

Cruncher

We’re adding Cruncher here as an alternative calculator, primarily because it’s good if you’re blessed with sausage fingers. It might not be elegant having to head into a sub-menu for numbers, but Cruncher’s keys are easier to stab than those in any rival product. And now in watchOS 2, everything’s way faster and far more responsive anyway.

1Password

The 1Password app provides the means to bring across some of your passwords or secure notes to Apple Watch. These are accessed via big, friendly buttons, and you can lock everything behind a four-digit PIN. (If you’re feeling especially paranoid, force-quit the app after use: hold the side button until the power screen appears, then press-hold the button until 1Password closes.) Note that 1Password is free to download, but you’ll need the ‘Pro Features’ IAP for the Apple Watch app.

Just Press Record

On iPhone, Just Press Record is a very efficient app for making quick recordings: tap the record button, capture some audio, stop the recording, and your audio then syncs to the cloud. With watchOS 2, this all comes to your wrist, and you can record without your iPhone being around. The next time you connect, your recordings are transferred across. Also, more immediate access to the app can happen by way of its Watch complication, a tap launching you straight into a recording.

Drafts 4

On iPhone, Drafts bills itself as the place where text starts. This is fair enough, since it’s a speedy and dependable note-taking app with comprehensive sharing options. Now, text can start on your wrist, through Siri dictation. Captured text is sent to your inbox, and any selected item can be appended/prepended to another, archived or deleted. With watchOS 2, everything’s faster and more reliable, and the app works even when your iPhone’s gone walkabout.

Instapaper

The original read-later service, Instapaper might seem an odd bedfellow for Apple Watch. But along with enabling you to manage your article archive, it can live-convert articles to speech. The result’s somewhat strange – like a robot reading bits of the internet to you – but it can be a convenient way to burn through articles when you’re not in a position to hold your iPhone in front of your face.

Clicker

Ambition’s all very well, but sometimes it’s the simpler apps that grab hold – and Clicker is certainly very simple. Post launch, you tap to increment a number on the screen. Force Touch and you can subtract or start from scratch. That’s it. Complication support leaves your number front and centre, so you can keep tabs on group numbers, days since an event, or exercise laps – at least up until the maximum supported number (2,147,483,647 – which is a lot of laps).

Entertainment

TodoMovies 4

If you’re a big fan of movies, you’ll want to keep track of great-looking films to check out and what you’ve already seen. TodoMovies ably deals with both, also enabling you to rate what you’ve watched. On iPhone, you get trailers, a comprehensive movie database to search, and themed lists to peruse. On Apple Watch, you just get access to your lists: Watched, To Watch and any custom lists you’ve created; but these lists can be quickly explored and reordered, and you can move and rate items.

Overcast

We reckon Overcast is the best iPhone podcast player, in part down to its excellent built-in effects for boosting voices and smartly removing silences. On Apple Watch, Overcast is essentially a remote for the iPhone app, giving you fast access to play/pause and seek buttons, and showing what’s up next. Force Touch loads a handy three-button screen that lets you delve into your subscriptions, toggle effects, and recommend the current show if you happen to like it.

TuneIn Radio Pro

TuneIn Radio provides access to over 100,000 radio stations from around the world. Using Apple Watch, you can change the current station your iPhone’s blaring out, access recent and related stations, follow shows and pause/play/skip. And if you don’t fancy paying, the free version works on Apple Watch as well.

Shazam

There’s still that sense of living in the future when it comes to Shazam. Waggle your phone about while a song plays in the background, and the app will reveal what it is. Now, you don’t even have to get your phone out – just wave your arm around to reveal a song’s title, as well as lyrics, just in case you want to leap on to the table and wow your friends with your vocal prowess.

Sky Guide

On iPhone, Sky Guide is the most beautiful and accurate star and constellation guide so this is money well spent. On Apple Watch, the companion app gives you a calendar of upcoming events, and optional notifications regarding what’s about to occur in your location, so for example you can catch the International Space Station zooming overhead. The watchOS 2 release boosts performance and adds a complication that supports Time Travel and offers a very accurate Moon phase.

Night Sky

In trying to bring a view of the heavens to your wrist, Night Sky tries too hard – it takes ages to render and is clunky to navigate, even if you do get information about celestial bodies. Elsewhere, though, the app shines, providing predictions about the night’s conditions that includes a handy clock view to see how cloud cover will change overnight. Generously, the Apple Watch app is available in the free ‘lite’ Night Sky as well as the paid release.

Games

Lifeline 2

The original Lifeline was the one Apple Watch game we preferred playing on the wrist as opposed to another device. Essentially a Choose Your Own Adventure title with you aiding a stranded astronaut, Lifeline’s atmosphere and smart writing made it an engaging experience with a surprising level of emotional clout. Lifeline 2 tries the same trick again, only this time you’re assisting Arika, a woman on a quest to avenge her family and, as an added bonus, save all of humanity. So make the right choices or you’ll doom Arika – and the world. No pressure.

$2.99, iTunes

Rules!

Rules! gives you a daily mini-game challenge, which is all about memorising rules and tapping relevant cards. Easy! Only it isn’t, because several rounds in, you’ll be juggling a bunch of rules in your head (“Tap ascending”; “Reds if you see green”; “No animals”), which must be dealt with in reverse order, all the while knowing that a single incorrect tap ends your game. With watchOS 2, the app’s far more responsive, boasts more levels, adds haptic feedback, and bundles the cutest complication you’re ever likely to see.

Brainess

Ignore, for a second, arguments that brain-training games really do train the brain, or provide even the remotest accuracy when awarding you a ‘brain age’ score. Instead, revel in the fact that Brainess is a suitably entertaining distraction for your Apple Watch, its quick micro-games being suited both to the device and also the amount of time you want to hold your arm aloft playing. You get the usual suspects here: memory tests; number games; card pairing; and that sneaky game that tries to trip you up in matching colours and words.

Trivia Crack

More or less a stripped-down asynchronous Trivial Pursuit, Trivia Crack has you clash brains with someone online, choosing from six categories of questions, and collecting little characters as you go. With watchOS 2, sounds are added, plus you no longer have to start games on your iPhone. Note that this doesn’t mean you can then use your iPhone to cheat and look up answers. (Well, you can, but you definitely shouldn’t.)

Twisty Color

In watchOS 2, devs can have the Digital Crown control any interface element. Twisty Color takes advantage of this, having you twiddle a ‘Twister’ in the screen’s centre. The idea is to match the colour of its surface to incoming bullets. Screw up three times and you’re done. It’s not exactly Super Hexagon, but Twisty Color is cheap, cheerful, actually feels like it was made for Apple Watch, and perhaps hints at better things to come for gaming on the platform.